Sunday, June 23, 2013

Since the beginning of June, New York based, Trinidadian artist Nicole Awai has been researching and working from Alice Yard on an Art Matters Grant. Her investigations lead her to La Brea and, after all this time, to a puzzling personal story of a childhood school excursion, she recalls, or imagined but actually may have missed. Derived from her research and photographs, she has embarked on an experimental wall work. Over the last seven years, Alice Yard has been actively facilitating exchange and project development with contemporary artists of the region and its diaspora. Please join us for this ongoing dialogue. All are welcome.Please note that, during the course of this week, Awai's wall drawing will appear and then disappear by Saturday June 27th.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Since the beginning of June, New York based, Trinidadian artist Nicole Awai has been researching and working from Alice Yard on an Art Matters Grant. Her investigations lead her to La Brea and, after all this time, to a puzzling personal story of a childhood school excursion, she recalls, or imagined but actually may have missed.

"...In the last 12 years there
has consistently been the presence of an ‘oozing’ materiality in my work. At
first it was viscous and lava-like and it manifested itself in the colors red,
white and blue. Finally it became a black ooze in the drawing series, Specimens
from Local Ephemera. I began to think of it as a site of simultaneous creation
and destruction, becoming and ending where time is elastic and non-linear....Now that my black ooze has
become such a vital, physical element in my work, I decided to have the real experience of the La Brea Pitch Lake. I am curious
about how the mythology of this imagined space germinated in my head...."

Awai
was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant
in 2011. She earned her Master’s Degree in Multimedia Art from the
University of South Florida. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York,
and currently serves as a Critic for the Yale School of Art. Her work
has been included in several seminal exhibitions, including the first Greater New York: New Art in New York Now, at P.S. 1/MoMA (2000), the Biennale of Ceramic in Contemporary Art (2003) the 2008 Busan Biennale in Korea, Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (2007), and Open House: Working in Brooklyn
(2004), the latter two held at the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Awai was a
featured artist in the 2005 I.P.O. series at the Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions includes her solo exhibition,
Almost Undone at the Vilcek Foundation, Mi Papi, Dream On – Happy Ending… ,Washington Square Windows, 80wse Galleries NYU and the Biennale of the Caribbean in Aruba. Be Inspired!
is currently on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary. The
exhibition features recent acquistions to the museum collection.

.Alice Yard is the backyard space of the house at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain.

This was once the house of Sean Leonard’s great-grandmother. Four generations of children played and imagined in this yard, and now we continue this tradition. Alice Yard is a space for creative experiment, collaboration, and improvisation.

Alice Yard is administered and curated by architect Sean Leonard, artist Christopher Cozier, and writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin, with the help of a growing network of creative collaborators. Read more about us here. Alice Yard is a non-profit organisation incorporated under the laws of Trinidad and Tobago.

Since 2008, Alice Yard has run a residency programme hosting artists, curators, and other creative practitioners. Find out more here.